Supported by
May 25, 2009 7:30 am
This week, the authors of “The Story of 42nd Street: The Theaters, Shows, Characters, and Scandals of the World’s Most Notorious Street,” responded to readers’ questions about the rise and fall and rise of the street that symbolizes the Broadway experience.
We are no longer accepting questions for this feature.
- Read the first set of answers, May 27.
- Read the second set of answers, May 28.
- Read the third set of answers, May 29.
Alexis Greene has written or edited eight books about theater, including “The Story of 42nd Street,” written with Mary C. Henderson (Backstage Books/Random House), “Women Writing Plays: Three Decades of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize,” (University of Texas Press), and “Front Lines: Political Plays by American Women,” an anthology of contemporary work that she edited with the playwright Shirley Lauro and that is being published this spring by the New Press.
Alexis Greene
She also edited the art catalog for the exhibition “Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance,” a joint project of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the League of Professional Theater Women.
Dr. Greene holds a Ph.D. in theater from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and has taught at Vassar College, Hunter College and New York University.
Mary C. Henderson
Mary C. Henderson is an internationally known authority on American theater history.
For more than a decade, she served as curator of the theater collection at the Museum of the City of New York.
Her numerous books on American theater include “Theater in America: 200 Years of Plays, Players and Productions,” “The City and the Theater,” “Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design,” “The New Amsterdam: The Biography of a Broadway Theater” and “Stars on Stage: Eileen Darby and Broadway’s Golden Age, Photographs 1940-1964.”
Comments are no longer being accepted.
Warren Howie Hughes May 25, 2009 · 8:27 am
What year did the movie house open along 42nd street that was referred to as “The Laugh Movie”…you know the one…with the mirrors on the doors that distorted your image?
RD May 25, 2009 · 8:44 am
What was 42nd St. like during the 1920’s? What would you say are the best sources for learning about New York’s social and cultural life during the 1920s? Was 42nd Street already a center of entertainment? What about the people whose daily and evening lives were based in midtown — where did they live, what kinds of jobs did they have, what were their aspirations, what was their night life?
arnie May 25, 2009 · 9:44 am
In 1952 I took a Brooklyn hi school date to see High Noon at a Times Sq.movie house. Afterwards we went for spaghetti @Toffennetti’s which I remember as being upstairs on the s.e.corner of 43rd. St. Am I right?
Stephen Rourke May 25, 2009 · 11:37 am
Can you discuss the political process by which it was apparently so easy to dismantle and destroy most of the theatres on 42nd Street? I think it’s an irony that the world’s most famous theatre street is now, for the most part, what a friend of mine once called a “corporate theme park,” and what I think of as a suburban shopping mall. The original intention behind the renewal of the street was to reclaim its history; that history was largely auctioned off to commerce.
emily May 25, 2009 · 1:17 pm
Does anyone remember Huberts Flea Circus on 42 street ?
Mary Henderson & Alexis Greene May 25, 2009 · 7:20 pm
The Eltinge was built in 1912 by the producer A.H. Woods and continued as a legit theater until 1931, when a new owner turned it into a burlesque house. In 1942, the city succeeded in shutting the burlesque operation down, and soon afterward the building was purchased by the Brandt famiily, which turned it into a movie house: The Laffmovie Theatre. In 1954, it was rechristened The Empire. This was the building that, in 1998, the develop Forest City Ratner put on rails and moved toward 8th Avenue, where it became the core of the AMC movie complex.
Alexis Greene
Mary Henderson
Courtney May 25, 2009 · 10:28 pm
I hear about the Liberty Theater quite often, with people saying it’s a beautiful theater that is sitting empty and isn’t used despite the fact it has the capabilities to be a Broadway theater. What can you tell me about it? Are there other theaters on 42nd street that are no longer in use but still exist?
Robert Hendrix May 25, 2009 · 11:15 pm
Everyone knows Times Square was named after the NY Times moved to the area just after 1900. Most people know it was named Longacre Square before that….not many people know why. Please explain why it was called Longacre Square and when it recieved that name.
Thank you in advance.
Mark May 26, 2009 · 8:59 am
Can you tell me more about the old Selwyn Theater and the lunchonette that use to be there at 229 West 42nd Street? Do you have any photos of it?
carol May 26, 2009 · 9:07 am
Could you name the people responsible for making our country’s most celebrated theatrical thoroughfare into a tribute to Micky Mouse and other assorted Disney characters? Also, I was puzzled, as to why there was such short sighted planning in renaming the Old Republic, The New Victory, why not the New Republic ? After all, The Victory Theater was a notorious movie house that featured pornography, hardly the best choice to be associated with what is now a children’s nonprofit theater.
Then there is The American Airlines Theater. What were these people thinking? They wiped away our cultural heritage in short of a few years. Why did they bother renovating these theaters if they were going to dismiss the contributions of so many great playwrights and producers, etc.? There is something said for respecting and preserving our American History and the people that contributed to our Golden Age of Theater. Why would they not want to honor those who made Broadway and New York for that matter, the greatest tourist attraction of the Western World?
H. HInds May 26, 2009 · 10:30 am
To what extent did the New York Times itself contribute to sustaining the “blue” period of 42nd Street and Times Square? Though not as common now, we can still feel the paper’s nostalgia for the peep shows and “grit” before it was force-sanitized by Giuliani. Was there a difference between the staff, who may have been patrons during lunch hour and enroute to the Port Authority and Grand Central after work, and the owners — who with their new building stood to gain from the area’s redevelopment?
Jerrold May 26, 2009 · 4:12 pm
I have never heard anybody raise this issue at all, so I will raise it:
Currently, they are constructing an extension of the #7 line
westward and then southward.
But why were there never any stations built further EAST
than Grand Central along 42nd Street?
After all, the L line has stations at Third Ave. and First Ave., and therefore serves as a crosstown subway along 14th St.
laurel May 26, 2009 · 4:22 pm
What distinguished Hammerstein’s Victoria on 42nd Street? Was it one of the earliest or just one of the largest theatres on the block?
Frank S May 26, 2009 · 4:52 pm
When and why did NY’s theater district move from 23rd Street up to Times Square?
curious bunny May 26, 2009 · 5:32 pm
I see not only all stores, but the subway stations and police recruitment centers have neon signs around Times Square. Is it part of the zoning requirement for every building to have a neon sign? If so, how far is the neon area defined?
There are street vendors selling framework pictures etc. Do they need license to do so? If so, are there restrictions on what can be sold, what cannot?
Who owns the giant ad boards there, are they owned by the building landlords since they block or attached to the building facade, or are they independently owned?
Thanks very much.
Russell May 26, 2009 · 5:47 pm
I think Disney should be applauded for their efforts on 42nd street. The only theater they own there has been restored to it’s former glory with legitimate theatrical shows and opened up the area for other live theatricals to play on a street that they were afraid to go near in the 70s/80s. I would like to hear the history of the New Amsterdam theater in that period of the mid seventies to mideighties and what is was used for up until it’s restoration
Preservationist May 26, 2009 · 5:55 pm
What happened to all the peep shows, book stores, xxx movie theaters, and porn emporia? Was the sex industry chased to other neighborhoods, or has it, like newspapers, succumbed to the internet?
Richard May 26, 2009 · 8:29 pm
I wonder why 42nd was created as the wide street it is. Were the major thoroughfares determined by subway stations, or the other way around. It seems curious to me, that like 23rd, 34th, 72nd and 86th street, 42nd was laid out as such a large and densely developed street – instead of, say, 20th, 30th, 40th, etc.
Thanks!
Barry Popik May 27, 2009 · 3:12 am
Do you realize that the great model Audrey Munson (who posed for “Civic Fame” on top of the Municipal Building, who is the lady in the Plaza Hotel fountain, and much else) can be found in the proscenium arch of Disney’s New Amsterdam Theatre?
(See NewspaperArchive, com,, the Syracuse Herald, 13 March 1921, “Queen of the Artists’ Studios” series.)
I’ve told Disney about this, but no one responds! A whole book was published on the New Amsterdam Theatre, but the authors were clueless. Can Disney put some historical explanation of its theater somewhere and mention the great Miss Munson–who died in total obscurity in 1996 at age 104 and still does not have a proper headstone on her grave?
peterbillionaire May 27, 2009 · 8:14 am
As a follow up to question 16 above: there used to be an open-air night club or beer garden on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theater. What is there now? Was the night club for people who paid to see the show at the theater? – or was there a separate entrance? Do you have any pictures showing the space now?
Ron May 27, 2009 · 8:14 am
What do you see as the future of 42nd Street? Will it continue to be the centre of theater or succumb to being a commerce district?
Thank you.
Frank S. May 27, 2009 · 4:55 pm
I actually have several questions regarding 42nd Street.
1. At anytime during its history, did 42nd Street ever have a trolley (either horse-drawn or electric). And have there been any plans to bring the trolley back in an updated form – like a light-rail?
2. When did 42nd Street become the red-light district that Mayor Dinkin’s signed to history? (and it was Dinkins not Giuliani who signed the deal with Disney – though Giuliana took credit for it)
2-B. What changed after the City’s crack-down on Burlesque in 1942 that the sex-trade came back to 42nd by the 60’s through the 80’s? And do you think that given some drastic change in the city’s fortune’s that the sex trade could ever re-emerge there – or is it gone for good?
I have some nostalgia for the “old” 42nd street. Even though I’m only 36, I am just old enough to remember the old 42nd Street in its death throes – when the sex shops were closing down and before the Disney-fication began. For a while 42nd looked like an eerie ghost-town.
One more question – 3 – then I’ll stop. As a teen during the 80’s I remember playing hookey at times with friends, and we would hang out at Play-Land, which was a giant arcade games establishment. How long had that been there prior to its closing?
AW May 27, 2009 · 8:26 pm
In the pre-redevelopment Times Square, the building were all brick and stone buildings, like 1501 Broadway though perhaps not so distinguished. All of the big neon signs that came to characterize Times Square were mounted on these brick buildings, which themselves were actually sort of dowdy, but one never noticed it because of the signs.
As I recall, when the penultimate proposal for re-developing 42nd St./Times Square was put forth, the proposal, which may have come from the architects, had an authentic consistency with brick buildings on most of which bright and flashy advertising signs would be mounted. But the city group responsible for Times Square Redevelopment rejected the proposal and sent the architects back to the drawing board, demanding that the buildings themselves be bright and garish and that the advertising signs and lights be an integral part of the buildings. The resulting lack of balance in the overall effect is what we have today, which both seems inauthentic and accounts for the overly-tacky garishness of both the lights and buildings. I know it sounds crazy to talk about overly-tacky when talking about Times Square, but in fact the historical foundation for the Times Square image had a certain balance to it, at least in the fogginess of memory.
Any light you can shed on this aspect of the re-development process and how we got to where we are would be welcome.
Any light you can shed on how t
Richard May 27, 2009 · 10:29 pm
I can respond to at least one question posed by Frank S.
Forty second street had, for years, a cable car, not a trolley car, per se. There are many photos around of the cars plying 42nd St., that looked like trolley cars, but lacking the overhead trolley pole. Instead, they ran off the drive power of underground cables that ran in a slit between the tracks, like the ones in San Francisco.
tudor city May 28, 2009 · 8:51 am
As a child in the 60s, I remember eating at Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant around 47 & B’way. How long was it there?
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